My Mother Suggests a Tranquilizer

And I think of beasts—
that strange shift in a wild eye
toward absence—an elephant’s knees
in collapse, the lion’s mane
matted from the muzzle, or the rhinoceros
tied, dangling, by her feet
from a helicopter.
 
My mother insists on gladness,
a Disney princess mother who actually kept
a wild squirrel for a pet, birds came to her—
on purpose. I was her shadow,
shirking her lightness, her ease, her aim
all these years, her intention, even now,
to pull me down, make the bed soft,
the days bright, happiness
the rule of law and land.
 
Sometimes my son looks at me
the way an animal would—
quick and caught—
and I say, babe,
everything isn’t meant to be okay—
just to see the boy in him
shift, and settle, know his sorrow,
name it human,
even necessary.